قصيدة رائعة للشاعر محمود درويش بالانجليزية

Poem Title : Jameel Bouthaina, and I
We grew older, Jameel Bouthaina and I, each

alone, in two separate eras . . .

It is time that does what sun

and wind do: it polishes us then kills us whenever

the mind bears the heart’s passion, or

whenever the heart reaches its wisdom

***

Jameel! does she grow old, like you, like me,

Bouthaina?

***

She grows old, my friend, outside the heart

in others’ eyes. But inside me

the gazelle bathes in the spring that pours out of her being

***

Is that her, or is that her image?

***

That’s her, my friend. Her flesh, her blood,

and her name. Timeless. She might stop me

tomorrow on her road to her yesterday

***

Did she love you, Jameel? Or did she like being a metaphor

in your songs, a pearl . . . whenever she stared

into your nights and welled up, she rose easterly as a moon

with a heart of stone?

***

It’s love, my friend, our chosen death

one passerby marrying the absolute in another . . .

No end for me, no beginning for me. No

Bouthaina for me or me for Bouthaina. This

is love, my friend. I wish I were

twenty doors younger than myself

***

for the air to be light on me, and for her side-profile

***

at night to be clearer than a mole

above her navel . . .

***

Did you seduce her, Jameel, contrary to what

the narrators have said about you, and did she seduce you?

***

I married her. We shook the heavens and they streamed

milk on our bread. Whenever I came to her my body

bloomed flower by flower, and my tomorrow spilled

its wine drop by drop into her jugs

Were you created for her, Jameel,

and will you remain for her?

***

I was ordered and tutored. I have no concern

for my spilled presence like water on her grape

skin. And no concern for the immortality

that will follow us like shepherd dogs.

I am only as Bouthaina created me

***

Would you explain love to me, Jameel,

to remember it one idea at a time?

***

People who know love best are the most perplexed,

you must burn, not to know yourself, but

to illuminate Bouthaina’s night . . .

***

Higher than the night, Jameel flew

and broke his crutches. And leaned into my ear

and whispered: If you see Bouthaina in another

woman, make of death, my friend,

a friend. And glitter over there, in Bouthaina’s

name, like the nûn in rhyme!